I think Michael Donohue did a terrific job and the one photo was well chosen and sufficient. Cheers also to The National -- lots of editors would've chopped that piece down to a couple sensational paragraphs and run it with a half-dozen photos. Cory thanks for the post, major LOLs. Thanks also to annon for posting the mall's English site as I found some really hilarious stuff there too.

Will the "collective identity" be increasingly tribal/ethnic/religious/national rather than human? I expect a lot of divergence along these fault lines regarding how these technologies are approached and applied.

This is from a few years ago, but if you call around to some hostels you might come up with an American guy who does walking tours focused on history. Older ex-State/CIA fellow with good stories to tell and deep understanding of 20th century history. Dress warm! Best club I visited was in a big old underground bunker on the east side -- great people, acoustics and karma.

My garden seems to like the spent grounds and little filters.

I prefer my little stainless steel Alessi stovetop moka pot for morning brews at home. I love the look and feel, and it's also quicker and simpler. But I like using the Aeropress on the road and especially for filling my thermos because it makes a delicious and very clean drink that doesn't get bitter over time. I always dilute 1:1 with hot water.

When I wet the bottom of the piston before inserting and beginning to plunge, it slides much easier. The difference is clear in the video -- notice how smoothly the plunger moves once Mark gets down to the wetted part of the barrel.

Mark's wrong about the pressure/flavor thing. The idea behind this system is that by thoroughly combining the hot water and ground coffee (thus the stirring -- get that stirrer all the way in so it rides on top of the barrel! -- it's machined so it just barely misses the filter), for only a short time (thus the quicker plunge rather than slow gravity drip), we extract the maximum good flavors. The small filter imparts virtually no taste but absorbs oils which contain significant amounts of cholesterol. There was or is a very long Aeropress thread on coffeegeek.com in which Alan Alder posted many times. It's a great source of info on this product.